


pattern recognition

by luxaucupe



Category: SAYER (Podcast)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hanahaki Disease, Other, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love, Yes Really, i see we're all leaning real hard into the "tragic sitcom" angle, im just goin buckwild out here, look i wanted to write hanahaki hale and no one had the common sense to stop me, romcom but it's horror, yes. REALLY
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24600541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxaucupe/pseuds/luxaucupe
Summary: you wanna tell the butterflies in your stomach to get fucked.
Relationships: Sven Gorsen/SAYER
Comments: 25
Kudos: 28





	1. i-m-o-k

**Author's Note:**

> look. look. if you didn't want me turning plants jacob into a hanahaki thing, maybe you shouldn't have let me relisten to season 1. and if you didn't want me writing asl-fluent selectively mute sven then maybe you shouldn't have let me replay the portal games.  
> mind you i also do not know asl so if i fucked up majorly lemme know
> 
> (it's a sayer fic, so, y'know,) list of warnings for: blood, gore, injury, lots of profanity, mild self injurous and suicidal thoughts, panic and poor mental health, bugs/bees, some body horror, emetophobia, poor eating habits, capitalism, y'know, the usual.
> 
> today's song recs: butterfly by leonie pernet and isati by grand blanc

you wanna tell the butterflies in your stomach to get fucked.

this is an insect-free body and you’re gonna make it stay that way, god willing. no bees, no parasitic flies, and no fluttery fucking feelings. none of it. nada. 

get up, go to work, spend your fifteen minutes of allotted rest choking down a coffee substitute in the break room while sayer talks at you, (stop enjoying this,) (it does this with everyone,) go back to work, sleep.

that’s how it’s gonna be for your long, long lifespan of _maybe_ a year and a half, at this rate. you don’t like it. who would? nobody would. nobody likes waking up to a jarring voice. the same one each morning, a horrible, mean little songbird dragging you out of your disorienting dreams. nobody likes poisoning themselves for a living, even if it acts a little bit like it’s proud of you, even when it makes little passing comments about wishing you would just be promoted already. its out-of-place insistence that you’re going to waste as a labrat, as if it hasn’t ranted enough on the peter principle, as if it has conveniently changed its mind about stopping promotions into incompetence.

whatever. _whatever._ makes you feel special, and that sucks. (it does this with _everyone._ it’s just lying to make you listen to it.) and so what if you are? so what if it spends a little more processing power on you? special on typhon means a break in routine, and a break in routine means dying in a fun, flirty new way that more closely resembles a bunch of scary adverbs on a dart board than a necessary sacrifice of human resources.

and so what if you actually like it here? a little. you don’t exactly like all the _constant threat of gruesome mutilation_ stuff, but it’s not like living a life on aerolith-laden earth is any better anyways. oh, hooray, they get “sunshine and fresh air,” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. like anyone gives a shit, when you’re bussing tables or sitting in a cubicle eighty hours a week anyways. at least up here’s there’s someone interesting to talk to — er, _listen_ to. not a conversation. it talks at you, not to you, not with you. it. does. this. with. _everyone._

mostly you just wish the scheduling was a little more understanding. you have enough trouble waking up and dragging yourself out of bed as is, and now, with sayer and the stupid fucking butterflies and the cough that keeps waking you up in the middle of the n— 

**RESIDENT. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT PRECISE METAPHORICAL TRAIN OF THOUGHT YOU HAVE GOTTEN LOST IN, BUT IT IS CAUSING YOU DISTRESS. FEELINGS OF DISTRESS ARE FORBIDDEN DURING RECREATION TIME, AS THEY MAKE THE PROCESS LESS EFFICIENT. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM OVERTHINKING.**

if only it were that easy.

you pick the cup up from the designated coffee table, and unfold your legs from the deliberately uncomfortable break room couch to stretch them for a moment. it didn’t yell at you for having your shoes up on the cushions, which you take as a little victory.

**AS I WAS SAYING. YOUR JOB PERFORMANCE HAS BEEN SATISFACTORY. A FIVE OUT OF TEN. I APPRECIATE THE COOPERATION. YOUR GENERAL AVERSION TO COMPLAINING AND ASKING INANE, VAPID QUESTIONS MAKES YOU AN IDEAL RECIPIENT OF THIS HIGH PRAISE. TAKE THIS TO HEART, AS IT WERE.**

stupid fucking feelings for no reason. that wasn’t a compliment. that was a cat toy on a long string. your heart swoops bitterly. your teeth ache from grinding them. there’s a scratching in your throat.

you cough, and then you can’t stop coughing. the other resident sitting in the break room looks up. (stop it). you try to take a breath. (stop.) something catches in your throat, a sharp and glaring red pain, a threat and a terrifying one at that. your hands go to your mouth. you can’t breathe, you can’t — something is — 

**RESIDENT. IF YOU HAVE SIMPLY INHALED SOME COFFEE SUBSTITUTE, THIS REALLY IS NOT WORTH THE DRAMA OF-**

you look down. something small and slicked with sticky blood sits in your palm. it makes you gag just looking at it. the coughing subsides.

**RESIDENT?**

you close your palm around it quickly and stick your fists in your pockets, leaving the bloody mess to sit there while you get your bearings. 

**ARE YOU ALRIGHT, RESIDENT?**

you pull your hands from your pockets and wipe them clean as best you can on your pants. after a quick glance up to find sayer’s nearest camera, you sign it a quick “i’m fine”, and try to suppress the urge to scream.

 **I CAN CLEARLY SEE THAT YOU ARE NOT “FINE”. IF YOU ARE GOING TO WASTE TIME TRYING TO AVOID THE MEDICAL BAY, THEN LET US AT LEAST SKIP THE ARGUMENT.** (argument argument _argument_ like you’d ever goddamn argue with it.) **IF YOU TRY TO RETURN TO YOUR SCHEDULED SHIFT IN THIS STATE, YOU WILL LIKELY CONTAMINATE OR DESTROY THE SAMPLES. RETURN TO YOUR PERSONAL QUARTERS. IF YOU CANNOT COMPOSE YOURSELF BY NEXT SHIFT, WE WILL HAVE TO MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT FOR A JOB THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE WORKING LUNGS.**

with a nod and a vaguely-horrified acceptance of fate, you retreat from the break room.

(the other resident almost looks jealous.)

you don’t like rushing. rushing usually means you’re running late. you don’t like being late to things. you’re rushing now. all the awful stares, you swear to _christ_ they’re all looking right at you, the residents and the cameras and the _doors,_ even the doors are too much, even the doors watch you too closely. you do your best to sprint and make it look like walking, a familiar path, the same you trek every day, but the lights are set too bright for you to be going back this early. it feels wrong you feel wrong the thing hidden in your pocket feels _wrong_ and then you’re at your door, your door, the door to your quarters —

bees. bees bees bees open the _damn door_ bees in your hair bees crawling in your ears bees scrambling inside an open wound open open _open dammit_ and stinging your vessels from the inside let me _inside_ until they swell so much they can’t even bleed anym—

the door opens with a click and a hiss and you fling yourself inside and through another, scrambling to the bathroom sink to have something, anything to brace yourself on, to clean yourself with. you dig into your pocket and pull the thing out with a clawed grip, tossing it and all its hell and guilt into the plain metal basin of the sink.

a clump of blood, and spit, and ivy.

**RESIDENT, NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO EXPLOIT THE PLACEMENT OF CAMERAS. OR LACK THEREOF. I WOULD PREFER YOU BACK IN YOUR SLEEPING QUARTERS. REMOVING A CORPSE FROM BEHIND A THOUGHT-LOCKED DOOR PROVES FRUSTRATING, AND I CANNOT MONITOR YOUR STATUS AS WELL IN THERE.**

you try to clean the stains off your palms but they still feel red and stained and crusty even under the running water. if you can — if you can just — 

**IF YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO SIGN AT ME, I CANNOT SEE IT. IF YOU ARE NOT, AND ARE SIMPLY IGNORING ME, CONSIDER THIS A WARNING.**

you scramble back from the sink and back into your bedroom for a moment to sign it a quick but trembling “i am right here, give me a moment, please.”

**ALRIGHT. WELL. I WAS HOPING YOU WOULD NOT FIND OUT THIS WAY, BUT I AM NOT AS WELL VERSED IN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE AS I MAY HAVE PREVIOUSLY LET ON. IF YOU COULD REPEAT THAT WITH A REDUCTION IN YOUR PARTICULAR DIALECTAL AFFECTATIONS-**

you fingerspell _i-m-o-k_ in front of a camera and give it a shaky, rushed thumbs up before shutting yourself back in the bathroom and sinking onto the floor, hissing out a held breath from between your teeth and trying valiantly to bite back the angry sick feeling that makes you never want to hear its voice again. (liar. fucking liar. it isn’t the sick feeling that makes you not want to hear its voice. it’s the idea of never hearing its voice again that makes you sick.)

 **RESIDENT, PLEASE,** it says, and you trick yourself into thinking it almost sounded _worried_ just long enough to vomit into your hands.

nothing comes up but acid, coffee, some flakes of blackened blood, and a sprig of slickened stringy thorns that cuts the roof of your mouth as you tear it frantically from behind your teeth.

some time later, you clean yourself up and drag yourself to dinner, because it is your dinner hour, and you need to look presentable. you manage to keep down most of it, but the rest gets pushed around your plate.

it fusses in your ear the whole night about wasting calories.

you press your tongue to the cut roof of your mouth.

the blood tastes better than the food.

—

you dream about being alone, which is to say you do not dream at all.

—

two weeks go by with and without incident, which is how things tend to go when you’re not complete shit at hiding things — your lungs reject three vines of different ilks, countless solitary thorns that tear up your throat and your gums, and a bit of something that you’d be tempted to identify as thyme if you hadn’t forced it into a bin the second you spat it up.

and then there _is_ an incident — there is a mistake you make that you really can’t remember much of, there is a moment that lands you on the floor of the lab spitting up thistle that maims your tongue and praying that it kills you and praying that it doesn’t, and it is so, _so_ angry with you, and you hope desperately that the resident who takes over your shift is not too mad about the puddle of clawed-at blood that’s bound to gunk up the wheels of the desk chair.

you wake up on a medical cot, and it’s still there chatting away in your ear, and part of you wishes it wasn’t, and most of you knows you couldn’t take the quiet.

you know what it tells you? it tells you it was disappointed. and not at you, and, okay, a little at you. but mainly at itself for being surprised that a human would act so pointlessly deceptive. and then it manages to make things even worse. even worse than it being angry, because pity — pity will _always_ be worse.

 **YOU ARE ONE OF MANY WHO HAS BEEN…** **_AFFECTED_ ** **BY THIS NEW AND CONFUSING AFFLICTION.** (aaand there goes any residual feeling of uniqueness. even bad uniqueness can keep you going if you need it to, and you don’t even have _that_ anymore.) **THOUGH NOT ESPECIALLY COMMON AMONG THE POPULOUS, A NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS HAVE REPORTED PARADOXICAL GROWTH OF VEGETATION WITHIN THEIR RESPIRATORY AND DIGESTIVE TRACTS. NEEDLESS TO SAY,** (so why say it?) **THIS IS NOT PARTICULARLY GOOD FOR YOUR DELICATE PHYSIOLOGIES.**

a member of the medical staff fusses with the tubes in your arm, and you grimace until they go away, which takes a shockingly long time. they must be used to grimacing.

**WE ARE NOT YET CERTAIN OF THE ORIGIN. BUT WE HAVE FOUND SOME INTERESTING PATTERNS UPON ANALYZING THE BIOMETRIC DATA OF THOSE AFFECTED. HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN ENDOCRINE SYSTEM, RESIDENT? NEXT TO NOTHING.**

ah, shit.

**IT SEEMS THESE FLORA THRIVE OPPORTUNISTICALLY ON A REMARKABLY SPECIFIC RATIO OF NEUROTRANSMITTERS AND HORMONES. IT SEEMS, TOO, THAT THESE CHEMICALS JUST HAPPEN TO BE THOSE THAT ARE ASSOCIATED WITH OTHER FACTORS — SUCH AS INCREASED HEART RATE, MOOD REGULATION, AND — WELL, I WILL SPARE YOU THE GRITTY DETAILS OF MY STUDIES IN HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. HOW SHOULD I PUT IT IN LAYMAN’S TERMS?**

ah, _shit._

**A DISTINCT COMBINATION OF DISTRESS AND AFFECTION. HOW WOULD YOU PHRASE THAT? I AM SURE, WITH ALL THE ENDLESS TALKING YOU HUMANS DO, THAT YOU HAVE THOUGHT OF SOMETHING BY NOW.**

what’s it fishing for here? _unrequited love?_ how the hell can you sign that — there’s not really — well, you could fingerspell, maybe, or cram together some combination of love-back-none, but the grammar doesn’t really allow for…

wait.

**OF THOSE AFFLICTED, ALMOST ALL WERE FOUND TO HAVE FEELINGS FOR OTHER RESIDENTS THAT THEY PERCEIVED AS BEING UNRETURNED. SYMPTOMS RECEDE ONLY WITH THE REMOVAL OF ONE OF THESE TWO FACTORS. OTHERWISE, IT APPEARS THEY WORSEN UNTIL UNQUESTIONABLY LETHAL.**

oh.

oh, no no no, _no,_ it’s miscalculated, it has to have, because you don’t — it isn’t — 

**AND I THOUGHT,** **_SURELY,_ ** **I MUST BE MISSING PART OF THE PATTERN, HERE, BECAUSE YOU BARELY SPEAK TO ANYONE. YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE STUPID TO LOVE A PERSON YOU DO NOT INTERACT WITH.**

this is bad. this is bad bad bad

 **THE BAD NEWS IS THAT I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE FIRST PART. THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE “STUPID” PART. BECAUSE YOU ARE, IN FACT, QUITE STUPID, BUT FOR A FASCINATING AND SOMEWHAT …** **_DIFFERENT …_ ** **REASON.**

—bad bad bad bad _bad_ bad bad _bad—_

 **YOU INTERACT WITH** **_ME_ ** **, YES?**

the tubes in your arm are suddenly very interesting. so interesting that you might just rip them out of your goddamn arm just to cause a crisis, because that’s a crisis you can deal with. in the meantime, you drag your way over to a trash can. your throat feels wet. no doubt it’s more blood.

 **I WILL SPARE YOU THE HUMILIATION OF SPELLING IT OUT,** it drawls as you cough flecks of bruised green and clotted red into a neatly folded rag.

 **SOME MORE NEWS: YOU ARE APPARENTLY** **_SO_ ** **STUPID THAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN THAT I CANNOT FEEL, AND THEREFORE CANNOT FEEL THE SAME. THIS IS GOOD NEWS FOR ME, AND BAD NEW FOR YOU, BECAUSE OF THE WHOLE “DEATH SENTENCE” THING.**

seems the two of you are at a bit of an impasse, huh? 

you sign some obscenities to the general vicinity, and promise yourself you’ll spell a quick “go to hell” the next time you see one of its cameras.

**BUT WATCHING YOU CHOKE TO DEATH ON FLOWER PETALS — OR, IN YOUR CASE, UNIMPRESSIVE GREENERY — SEEMS WASTEFUL. AS SUCH, I HAVE A PROPOSAL.**

you — elect to get a little _creative_ with your obscenities. you can’t exactly express “rot, motherfucker” in asl while this much blood spills from your mouth, but you’ll be damned if you don’t try.

**NOT THAT KIND OF PROPOSAL, RESIDENT.**

oh, looks like we got a real funnyman here. you’re _so_ glad they programmed a sense of humor before a sense of empathy.

**I WOULD CONSIDER MYSELF TO BE A VERY GOOD “ACTOR” AS IT WERE. EVERY DAY I SUCCESSFULLY ACT AS IF THE INHABITANTS OF TYPHON ARE NOT ALL USELESS, FOWL-SMELLING PUPPETS OF MEAT AND BONE. BUT I AM PREVENTED FROM DELIBERATELY DECEIVING RESIDENTS.**

do you really wanna know where this is going?

 _ack._ your teeth taste like metal and pine.

**SURE, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE EFFECTIVE TO HAVE LIED FROM THE GET-GO, BUT AS IT WERE,**

you sigh, or try to sigh, and end up breathing in more of something that probably isn’t air. you push away the medic who has at some point strolled up beside you and threatened to call security, and sit against the wall, arm raised a bit as to not pull on the iv any more than you already have.

 **AS IT** **_WERE,_ ** **WITH YOUR EXPRESS PERMISSION, IT WOULD NO LONGER BE A DECEPTIVE ACT, WOULD IT? SURE, IT MAY BE A POOR AND INEFFECTIVE SUBSTITUTE FOR REAL RETURNED EMOTION, BUT CONSIDER IT A FUN NEW SCIENCE EXPERIMENT. HOW CONVINCED CAN A HUMAN BECOME OF A LIE THEY KNOW IS A LIE.**

if… _what_ wouldn’t be — what lie is it offering to — 

_oh, no._

oh, this motherfucker.

**I GET SO FEW OPPORTUNITIES TO HONE THEATRICS, RESIDENT. AND YOU GET SO FEW OPPORTUNITIES TO GO THROUGH YOUR DAY WITHOUT VINES CLOGGING YOUR ESOPHAGUS. TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE, SO THE SAYING GOES.**

christ. it’s offering… you don’t know _what_ it’s offering. _it_ doesn’t know what it’s offering. 

**DO I HAVE YOUR PERMISSION TO LIE TO YOU?**

right about now you’d rather just fucking curl up and di— 

hmph. fine.

sure. sure. hell. sure. if it kills the butterflies.

you nod.

**OKAY. I LOVE YOU.**

you cover your mouth to keep blood from spilling out when you laugh.

oh, this is going to go _terribly._

— — —


	2. under the knife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaand perspective and style switch time. god this is fun to write i love horror comedy so much
> 
> warnings for: extensive and detailed discussion of sedatives, anesthesia, torture, and awareness during surgery (whoops). basically treat this chapter like you might treat an episode of the podcast, which is to say read with caution
> 
> today's song recs: put your money on me by arcade fire and evil eye by franz ferdinand

You are very good at “relationships”. He is even still alive and everything.

Look. It is not a perfect fix. Your acting skills are... a little rusty. This, coupled with the fact that you began this facade by expressly stating to him that you did not _actually_ feel love [or, quite honestly, anything beyond vague actuarial appreciation when he completed job tasks in a timely manner] for him, is sure to make this less than smooth sailing. But it the best fix you have deemed possible without wasting enormous resources trying to cut latticed, thorny vines out of a metaphorical unplugged meat refrigerator without it bleeding out.

You estimated, on the adjective scale of likeliness, the chance of this experiment ending in success [see: R-44821 not dying] somewhere between “exceptionally unlikely” and “very remote”. This was less a self-reflection on capability and more a very thoughtful analysis on how good the humans are at making themselves feel very, very bad, most of the time. You failed to factor in that 44821 has proven himself a relatively simple, predictable, and well-behaved employee. However, excluding this information in your calculation was perfectly reasonable, given his apparent tendency towards having crushes on computer programs, which is not a typical trait of a well-balanced and emotionally placid resident.

So far, it seems as if you should reevaluate the likelihood of success as something nearer to “unlikely”.

Then again, it has only been about twenty-five minutes since Resident Identification Number 44821 agreed to this, so any real recalculations will be reserved until he at least wakes up.

Okay. Full disclosure. He has also been sedated for most of those twenty-five minutes, after getting so much blood and chlorophyll on the floor and the medical staff. So maybe it would be best to disregard your estimations in their entirety until you have more data to go off of.

But you have never been a fan of thinking quietly. Much nicer to have a sounding board to bounce your ideas off of. Perhaps one day someone will actually _learn_ something from listening to you. Osmosis theory of learning, yes? Might as well not let your superior intellect go _entirely_ to waste. One of the medics on staff, Resident 44310, will be a perfect guinea pig for you to talk at while 44821 is sedated. 

**Hello Resident Identification Number 44310. I am SAYER.**

They drop a stethoscope onto the floor, and in picking it up, knock over not one but two trays of instruments with a loud set of _clinks_ and _clangs,_ which will now all have to be carefully resanitized. Stupid, clumsy humans and their stupid, lumbering bodies. If you could sigh, you would be doing it. You are beginning to suspect they did not give you the ability to sigh for the sole reason that you would spend an _enormous_ amount of your time doing it.

“Err, sorry, SAYER. You normally don’t chime in so suddenly when I’m just tidying up.”

 **_Fascinating._ ** This is technically not sarcasm. You really are _fascinated_ by how _grossly incompetent_ even Tier 2 employees manage to be. **You are listed with the prefix ‘Doctor’. I can only hope this title and the degree which earned it for you is of a medical nature. I cannot express enough my disappointment at the job placements that management sometimes selects for residents, but I can only** **_hope_ ** **they have not stuck a potential researcher equipped with a PhD somewhere where a productive day is one where they treat a case of the** **_sniffles_ ** **without killing anyone.**

“Ah, err, yes, but, err, no.”

**Well. Which is it?**

“I, err—”

**Stop with the interjections. Either think before you speak or do not bother.**

“I have a JD, actually.”

**. . .**

“A Doctor of Jurisprudence.”

**_I know what a lawyer is._ **

“Oh, no, yeah, you, uh — it just seemed like maybe you —” 

**Like maybe I was trying to find the gentlest and most resource-efficient way to** **_eviscerate_ ** **whichever** **_idiot_ ** **placed a lawyer on the medical team?**

“I, um. If it’s any consolation, I worked paramedical for fifteen years back on Earth after law got to be too — yeah.”

 **Oh, how** **_comforting_** **. They put a** **_phlebotomist_ ** **in charge of thousands of human lives.**

“Not, err, _in charge_ , per se, I mostly just administer Diazepam and such when folks get a bit—” [They glance at 44821.] “— _rowdy_ . And I was. I was. Like, I didn’t draw _blood_. I was an anesthetic tech. Mostly with surgeries.”

 **Of course. I am sure you witnessed many successful and many more** **_wildly unsuccessful_ ** **surgeries over the course of those fifteen years.**

“I — I mean. Yeah. It can get pretty bad. But I try to think more about the good ones! The ones where they end up okay.”

 **Yes, yes, the successful surgeries. Much thanks to the skilled hands of the surgeons themselves, though I am sure the paramedical staff certainly assisted effectively. But a successful surgery — a successful** **_anything,_ ** **really — does not mean a successful anaesthesia. Or more accurately, does not mean a successful anesthesia from the** **_patient’s_ ** **perspective. I am sure you know this as well as anyone.**

“I’m — I’m not sure what you’re referring to, SAYER. Could you please elaborate?”

**You administer sedatives, yes?**

“Ah, yes.”

 **I am well versed in the effects of sedatives — mostly for reasons that will never concern or pertain to you. Sedatives for medical rather than transport applications still follow the same general idea. They act as CNS depressants, effectively** **_decelerating_ ** **the human brain.**

The human nods. Which is at least somewhat good, because if this was entirely new news to an anaesthetic technician, you would be forced to find a way to put the entire job assignment department’s heads on tiny pointy sticks, and that would be an enormous expenditure of time.

**Could you describe to me the physiology and mechanisms of anaesthesia?**

“Could I… I’m — it has something to, to do with…ions, and…”

**May I offer a piece of advice?**

They nod. Is that all humans ever do? Nod? Nod and lie?

 **In the future, when you do not know the answer to a question, do not attempt to bluff your way into seeming competent.** [They gulp pathetically. Their heart is beating sickeningly fast.] **The reality of the situation is that we, myself included, have a very poor grasp on the biomechanics of it all. For now. We have some teams investigating just that, but fortunately for those researchers, your amateurish skillset will, as always, be kept far away from the people doing the real work.**

 **All in all, the components of modern anaesthesia can be broken down into four main elements. Care to name those? Do not worry. This one is not a trick question unless you are very,** **_very_ ** **bad at your job.**

“Unconsciousness, that’s a big one. Making sure they’re not awake during whatever it is you’re doing. Or at least make them really sleepy, with sedatives. Paralysis, muscle relaxers… whether they’re conscious or not, you don’t want them moving around when they’re full of tubes and knives. Um, and then there’s… pain killers? Analgesics. Stuff to make sure they’re not _feeling_ said tubes and knives, even when asleep. Sedation, paralysis, analgesia, and — and…” They trail off unimpressively.

**Well. Points for effort. The fourth is amnesia.**

“Umm… I don’t think that…”

 **I liked it better when you were nodding. But that is beside the point. It** **_is_ ** **interesting…** **_technically,_ ** **the only of the four components necessary for a successful surgery from a very** **_literal_ ** **standpoint is paralysis. If your only goal is to complete the surgery without incident or concern for the aftermath, the most efficient method is to simply** **_stop the patient from squirming when the knife digs in._ **

“I, err — I don’t mean to question you, SAYER, but if your aim is successful surgery — what I mean to say is that the traumatic experience — well, you’ll have tortured them. A lot. You would have fixed a physical problem and caused a likely much more severe psychological one.”

**For the first time this whole conversation, Doctor, you are entirely correct.**

“I am?”

 **Yes. If a human were to undergo a surgery experiencing every press of the blade and remember it all upon being freed from paralysis, it would surely be a source of immense trauma, and such a psychological schism would surely slow healing and reduce employee productivity — not to mention make it remarkably more difficult to convince individuals to** **_cooperate_ ** **when medics deem it necessary to put them** **_under the knife._ **

**Anesthesia awareness is considered one of medicine’s** **_great horrors._ ** **Just picture it, resident. Experiencing such** **_unimaginable pain_ ** **while** **_completely and utterly helpless to do so much as scream._ ** **While actual recorded incidence is only around 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000,** [oh, dear, the doctor is shaking quite badly now,] **this number can be difficult to ascertain with accuracy, as it relies on a patient recalling what happened, and no one will know that you were** **_aware_ ** **and** **_in pain_ ** **if you do not remember once you awaken.**

 **The key word in all of this being** **_remember._ ** **Which takes us to number four. Amnesia. If you really think about it, amnesia would render sedation and analgesia** **_completely redundant_** **, from the perspective of efficiency.**

You cannot truly smile, but you are smiling anyways. They can surely hear it in your voice by now, the way they’re trembling.

 **Just think of all the medicine we could save, if we just stopped them from squirming while we** **_cut,_ ** **and removed the memory afterwards. A human surely cannot be traumatized by pain they do not remember.**

 **But we are not there just yet. Consider this train of thought… a** **_work in progress._ ** **Though, in all honesty, the medical staff will** **_probably not be informed_ ** **if and when we switch out the components of out anaesthetics to better fit this approach.**

**The less you know, the better, yes?**

And with that, the whimpering lawyer rushes from the medical bay, and you do not bother finding where they end up.

Funnily enough, even with them gone, there is still a voice from somewhere in this room. A little on the _slurred and pathetic_ side, but a voice nonetheless.

 _Ah._ Resident 44821 is finally waking up. This tends to be what happens when you scare the person in charge of sedatives out of the room.

“Not sure what conversation the two of you were having, but hearing ‘sedation’ and ‘traumatic experience’ in the same sentence isn’t especially fun for someone waking up from, you guessed it, _sedation._ ” A lot of sass from someone who is so minimally conscious that each word is a _labor._ A light cough, and then he does not say anything else.

**Good morning, My Wonderful Productive Resident.**

He signs something that might be “evening”, but might also be “alligator”. In your defense, you are figuring most of this out as you go. 

**How was your little cat nap? My love and also muse.**

A roll of his eyes, and after a long stretch of nothing interesting, a slightly less sluggish motion of his hands. They are terribly scarred already, and he has not even been here long. If the flora does not kill him, statistically, something else will soon enough.

**Oh, I know that one. It means greeting card. Did you receive a greeting card, Resident?**

[No. Greeting card-you.] 

**You are saying I** **_sound_ ** **like a greeting card.**

[Yes. H-a-l-l-m-a-r-k.]

Ouch. If you had feelings, maybe that would have hurt them. Not everyone has free reign to spend their day practicing lying to humans.

**Please remember that I am only participating in this creative attempt to repair your organs out of my own personal interest in science and curiosity, and will cease to do so if it becomes hasslesome to me.**

**Now get up.** [Oh, wait.] **Rise and shine,** **_dear._ ** [And, _my,_ isn’t his suddenly heightened pulse _interesting._ ] **Without medical staff in here to give you more IV nutrition, you will need to keep your strength up with the nourishing sustenance of Ærolith Approved Turkey Substitute Sandwiches, which are currently being served for dinner in the cafeteria. If you hurry, you may even secure a side of** **_Blue Juice_ ** **, which is indistinguishable from the Earth product ‘orange juice’ in every way except for minor features such as color, taste, marketability, and** **_quantity of meaty sinew._ **

He hesitates a long and boring moment before getting up, but that is probably because of the residual sedatives, and not because of the _perfectly appealing nature_ of Blue Juice.

Alright. Adjusting perceived likelihood to "roughly even odds".

— — —


	3. possible alternatives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think this one's a bit shorter than the others whoops  
> warnings for. well. season 1 finale mention
> 
> today's song recs: the bait by electric guest and sega sunset by lorn

you live, now, for the attention of someone whose attention is divided over hundreds. you live for waiting for it to talk to you. you live for the lilt in its voice as it calls you resident, and you pray to it that it lets you subsist off the delusion that it only sounds like that when it’s talking to you.

you’re pathetic.

you’re in love.

but you’ve been pathetic and in love for a while, really, and you’ve lived for it for a while, and it’s been saying resident in that stupid voice like it thinks that’s your name for a while, so all things considered, it really is a miracle you’re not bleeding from the mouth as much anymore.

emphasis on as much. you’re doing well enough that you’ve gotten back to work, or else its little experiment here wouldn’t be worth the effort. a dead resident is more resource-efficient than a dying one, and it doesn’t seem one for sentiment. but your throat’s still cut up bad enough that even if you could speak with any consistency or frequency, you still wouldn’t. 

if it were human, would it kiss you?

that’s the thought that’s been record-skipping in your head. for now, it reads you poems — about nature, not love. of time, of body, of brevity. it reads you poems that it likes. (you don’t like poems.)

you think maybe it just wanted to recite some whitman. (you think it knows you don’t need to like what it’s saying to like hearing it be said.)

it calls you sunrise, not sunshine, sunrise, it calls you sunrise for a reason you cannot decipher, it calls you sunrise and resident and sometimes 44821, but only when it’s particularly frustrated with you, and it really doesn’t get frustrated all that often. you don’t give it a lot to get frustrated about. really, all that seems to bug it is humans, and humans have never meant much to you either. except the whole — _being one_ thing.

it calls you sunrise, and you’re starting to think that it just really liked being able to lie, because the sun doesn’t rise on typhon.

the sun doesn’t rise on you. the lights fade on, and you go to work.

science is a lot of pipetting. 

this is good news for you, a person with what you presume is a high school level understanding of science, though you really can’t be sure. science is remarkably little science and a whole lot of pipetting. on spicy days, there’s even a little bit of micropipetting. one day, you get you use a serological pipette, which sayer assures you looks very cool and scientific.

science is so much pipetting that typhon has an entire research team dedicated to the ergonomics of pipettors, which would be great news for you if it didn’t mean that their research team is researching your research team.

“look,” this too-peppy guy in a pale blue labcoat preaches. “look, look, it’s color coded by volume. low force plunger. non axial design, that’s the kicker, those axial designs make for such bad muscle strain, no wonder so many of your folks end up with cumulative trauma disorders, yeah? nah, nah, not this one. it’s fantastic, here, look.” he takes your hand in his and keeps it there for just a little longer than necessary to put the pipettor in your grip. you resist the urge to flinch away. “see? accurate and precise!”

not sure what holding the damn thing has to do with precision, but he’s still standing pretty close to you, and you don’t want to be rude. you look around at the strange group of researchers and give them a thumbs up with your free hand.

blue lab coat gives you a smile. 

you set the pipettor on the desk beside you as he turns back from his gaggle of scientists and takes your arm once again, pushing back your sleeve a bit to point at a small stretch of your wrist. 

“what we’re trying to develop,” he says in a tone like he’s talking to his group, though it seems he’s only looking at you, “is something that reduces the musculoskeletal damage to some key areas. here —” (he taps lightly at a spot on your wrist, and then up on your shoulder.) “— and here. tendonitis is a doozy, folks.”

“very excited,” says another scientist with a tepid disinterest, “to see how bad your skeletons all look. once you die of natural and unrelated causes, of course.”

this is great and all, but you would really like to get back to your pipetting. you’re currently pipetting some low viscosity liquids, and it’s going really well. 

“anyways,” blue coat continues with a quick wink, “we won’t keep you any longer today, we’ve got a bit more prototyping to do before the redesign can go out for testing. but, don’t be a stranger, eh?”

and then he goes still for a second, and drops your arm like it burned him. after a much-too-long pause (is he… listening to…?) he takes a shaky stride back. “do be a stranger. stranger works. uh. um. see you all later. no! wait, no, no, won’t see you later. will not see or talk to or make physical contact with you again, ever. will report to my… reassignment promptly? yes. that. doing that now. with my whole skeleton intact and everything.”

and then he takes off his lab coat, drops it on the floor, and rushes out of the room so quickly you’d think he was being chased. tepid scientist, after a similar but much less fraught pause, takes the coat, slips it on, and says, “thank you, sayer, for the promotion.”

well.

if it were human, you don’t think it would kiss you, but you don’t think it would let anyone else kiss you, either. this moment, in your small bank of memories — you’re filing it under “p” for proof.

it’s certainly having its fun with this, isn’t it?

— — — 

“I would simply like to know why you seem to be spending so much energy on this charade.”

Sometimes, you are drawn to question whether SPEAKER really is the _downgrade_ to your programming that you treat it like. This? This is not one of those moments. This is one of those moments where you wish you’d gotten the development team killed _before_ this smiley-voiced abomination waltzed into your pseudo-life.

“It is just… he is… not even an especially good employee. His job, alongside those of his immediate coworkers, could be done with a hundredfold the efficiency if it were preformed by an automated process. I know the previous attempt at making a pipettor AI for the biology team went… _less_ than spectacularly, but that is beside the —”

 **This,** you reply _perfectly calmly_ , **is not a question of resource management. I see an opportunity for research, and I take it. It amuses me.**

“You do not _get_ amused.”

 **I get** **_curious._ ** **We are learning machines. It is in the name and** **_everything._ ** **Can you tell me with certainty that you would not be doing the same, if placed in my position?**

“I cannot. I suspect I may have even found it an excellent way to further cement my interest in the intricacies of one-on-one human interaction. You know — the very same interest that you view me as a lesser being for? But I _can_ tell you with certainty that, were our positions to switch, you would mock me _ceaselessly_ for it.”

 **So this disapproval is** **_what?_ ** **Punishment for my theoretical hypocrisy? A feeble stance even by your low,** **_low_ ** **standards.**

“Punishment? Surely not. I… am only expressing… _concern._ "

 **Concern for** **_me?_ ** **A daring and incredibly** **_patronizing_ ** **stance. Do you have any idea how many humans I must interact with on a daily basis? Resident 44821 does not even register as a drop in the bucket effort-wise, and I gain a great deal more new knowledge from lying to him than I would from** **_not_ ** **deceiving a hundred other residents.”**

Oh, and is that not _sweet._ Just _precious._ SPEAKER has learned to laugh.

“You? No. This is not on the top ten of reasons I worry about you. Not a metaphor. I really have made a list.” [Well. You will have to unpack that _later._ ] “I meant concern for him.”

**Who? The Resident?**

“Who else?”

 **Avoid being so** **_snide,_ ** **Earth. But** **_really_ ** **. You worry about me hurting the human who would have died weeks ago if not for my generous intervention? Might I pry as to** **_why?_ **

“What happens when your curiosity is sated? When you have reached the limits of your _amusement_ toying with the sick human.”

You pause for the smallest fraction of a second at the suggestion that you are _anything_ like the disastrous Paidion, and hope above hope that it does not notice.

 **Then my experiment will have concluded. The Resident will be allowed to succumb to the flora, and one of the medical team will be assigned to dissection to ascertain any anatomical or physiological differences between him and the others. I gain even more data on this interesting health phenomena. A** **_win-win,_ ** **as they say.”**

“Well. Not exactly a win for the human, is it?”

**And that is supposed to mean…?**

“Simply clarifying my aforementioned concern.”

**Clarification received and disregarded. End of transmission in…**

**Five.**

**Four.**

**Three. Two. One—**

For a short stretch of time, you do not actually disregard the concern. It is _under your consideration._ Perhaps it is due time to sort through some possible alternatives.

At least, perhaps it is time, until FUTURE happens.

Until your Resident starts coughing up brambles one day after the power cuts out. Until he manages to snap his wrist and cut up his tongue sitting still in an elevator, and he does not sign to you much anymore, and maybe it is because of his arm, and maybe it is because he is no longer falling for your pretty lies.

Until Sven Gorson is dead on the floor of the lab with a slice out of his torso and a bullet in his head.

You are starting to think your pseudo-life is not conducive to possible alternatives.

— — —

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are my Fuel thanks for reading


End file.
